Promise and devotion: catholicism and Girl Guides in Brazil

This paper attempts to analyze the main justifications for the expansion of Girl Guides in Brazil, a movement that featured a strong expression of female association, a tactic mobilized by certain female Catholic intellectuals to legitimize their circulation in the public space. It indicates education, culture and assistance as important fronts, in a group of actions aimed at securing the Catholic foundations of Brazilian society. Although the elementary principle of Girl Guides wasn’t connected to any one religion or belief, it’s possible to assess that the movement in Brazil was strongly intertwined with a religious and moral discourse in the form of the “good Girl Guide”, who should be pious and devoted to her promise of serving God and country, with clearly Catholic roots.

Einaudi and Cooperative Education Association (MCE). Traces of a project for the elementary school (1966-67)

The aim of this paper is to show the editorial relationship between the Einaudi publishing house and the Cooperative Education Association (MCE) during the second half of the Sixties. The members of the Association were looking for an editor willing to spread their pedagogical instances for the renewal of the Italian school and they found it in Einaudi. Thanks to the study of the correspondence and the documentation preserved in the Giulio Einaudi Editore Historical Archive, it has been possible to analyze a project of textbooks for the elementary school, made in collaboration with relevant members of the Association such as Gianni Rodari, Mario Lodi, Giuseppe Tamagnini and Bruno Ciari. The collections were never published, in part for financial reasons, but also because of the rising debate around the textbooks. The opinion of the Association in the late Sixties was changed: the point was not to renew the textbooks but to abolish them. Understanding the reasons of the end of this project might help to clarify the pedagogical impact of the cultural and social changes of that period, the relationship between education and politics. Moreover, it is not by chance that from the ashes of this project took shape The wrong country (Il paese sbagliato), a masterpiece written by Mario Lodi destined to become a classic for the history of education.

Maria Montessori, her times and our years. History, vitality and perspectives of an innovative pedagogy

Il numero monografico sul tema Maria Montessori, i suoi tempi e i nostri anni. Storia, vitalità e prospettive di una pedagogia innovativa è parte delle iniziative di ricerca collegate al Progetto di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) dal titolo Maria Montessori dal passato al presente. Accoglienza e implementazione del suo metodo educativo in Italia nel 150° anniversario della sua nascita, finalizzato alla ricostruzione della figura e dell’opera della scienziata di Chiaravalle e della penetrazione del suo metodo educativo in Italia a partire dall’istituzione della prima Casa dei Bambini nel 1907 e all’analisi delle esperienze innovative diffuse negli ultimi anni nel solco della pedagogia montessoriana

Origins and development of the Maria Montessori’s mathematical proposal

The introduction of complex mathematical concepts through perceptual and sensorial hands-on experiences is one of the most relevant aspects of the Montessori method proposal. This article aims to investigate the origins of the Montessori’s profound interest for mathematics, studying the history of the education of mathematics, after the unification of Italy, in which her school education took place. Her key concepts and beliefs about the learning of mathematics and, furthermore, the evolution of her proposal will be illustrated through the analysis of her main publications, both the generalist and the specialized ones in the field of mathematics (Psicoaritmetica and Psicogeometria), and handwritten notes about the lessons of XVI° international course, held in Rome in 1931, which the Opera Nazionale Montessori acquired from her students’ archives. Finally, an overview of the actualization of the Montessori method in the contemporary research will be explained, particularly focusing on the neuroscientific discoveries which have proved the effectiveness of the Montessori proposal to empower the cognitive processes involved in the development of mathematical thinking.

Maria Montessori and Anna Freud: links and influences between pedagogy and psychoanalysis

The fascination with the Montessori Method stems from a never quite exhaustive analysis of her studies, which, due to the multiplicity and complexity of its elements, continually lend themselves to readings, hermeneutic interpretations and discoveries. Following a series of “clues” that see the figure of Maria Montessori intertwined with that of Anna Freud, this article intends to enhance the interdisciplinary interweaving and the multiple links which, by relating pedagogy with psychoanalysis, favor a broader vision of the implications relating to the changes occurring during the first half of the twentieth century, in which the child is the protagonist.

Giuliana Sorge, Luigia Tincani and dissemination of Montessori method

Giuliana Sorge (1903-1987) was one of Maria Montessori’s closest disciples. Many parts of her life are linked to the alternating vicissitudes of the spread of the Method in Italy. She is personally involved at the time of the breakdown of the relation between Maria Montessori and fascism. We find her in the immediate postwar period engaged in the reconstruction of the Montessori National Institution and in the dissemination of the Method in Italy. To do this, she weaves a network of relations with exponents of the political and ecclesiastical world assisted by the friendship of Luigia Tincani, a Catholic, Montessori’s friend, founder of what will become the Free University Maria SS. Assunta and a religious congregation. This emerges from an unpublished correspondence between these two women, which also contains interesting news relating to the hostility of prof. Aldo Agazzi towards the spread of the Montessori Method.

Maria Montessori, pedagogical orthodoxy, and the question of correct practice (1921-1929)

The issue of correct practice (i.e., according to Henri Louis Go, practice that reflects the spirit and letter of a pedagogy), concerns every pedagogue, and Maria Montessori certainly took correct practice very seriously from the outset. Indeed, her emphasis on this crucial issue explains some of the strategic choices she made, as well as the ways she promoted her method abroad, and the relationships she maintained with her contemporaries (analyzed here via the early years of the journal Pour l’Ère nouvelle). These all led to accusations of dogmatism or pedagogical orthodoxy that continue to be leveled at the Montessori network today. This article sets out to explore the controversy surrounding the issue of correct practice in the field of pedagogy, taking Montessori as its example. Focusing on the 1920s, it considers the questions raised by attempts to protect a life’s work within a heterogeneous array of philosophical and political practices and positions. It also explores the reticence that some of Montessori’s contemporaries (particularly Decroly and Ferrière) showednot toward her pedagogy per se, but toward the way she conceived of and applied this pedagogy.

Montessori’s Children’s Houses in Calabria at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Historic Archive of the ANIMI

The birth of Montessori’s Case dei Bambini (“Children’s Houses”) and the adoption of her innovative teaching method constitute an interesting chapter in the renewal of educational practices in Italy in the early years of the 20th century. Spreading from North to South, the biggest impact was felt where the social question was most acute. Milan, Rome and Città di Castello (the location of the Villa Montesca belonging to Leopoldo Franchetti and his wife Alice Hallgarten), together with very small communities such as those of Ferruzzano and Saccuti in the province of Reggio Calabria, were ideal contexts in which to test the assumptions of Maria Montessori’s approach to pedagogy. Specifically, this paper examines the experience of the Children’s Houses and nursery schools set up in Calabria by the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (ANIMI, the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno). The use of partly unpublished materials kept in the Association’s Historic Archive makes it possible to reconstruct the enthusiasm for the Montessori method of some teachers who were not from Calabria and to assess its positive effects on the children, who were among the country’s most neglected, often condemned to a series of privations.